Jeff Ashton explains why he's running for state attorney

Veteran prosecutor Jeff Ashton will formally announce this week that he is running for Orange-Osceola State Attorney, presenting what many consider the first real challenge in years to Ashton's old boss and longtime incumbent Lawson Lamar.

Ashton may be best known for his role in prosecuting Casey Anthony, but he spent a long career in the State Attorney's Office. In an exclusive interview, Ashton told the Orlando Sentinel that he plans to reshape an office he says is plagued by bureaucracy, politics and cronyism.

"One of the reasons I'm running is to basically give voters a choice," Ashton said during a blunt, free-wheeling interview before his official campaign filing. "I'm a prosecutor. I still think of myself as a prosecutor. And Mr. Lamar is primarily a politician.

"And so the people have a choice: Do you want a prosecutor, or do you want a politician?" he said.

Lamar's chief assistant and campaign treasurer, Bill Vose, said the campaign had no immediate response to Ashton's announcement but expected a formal response sometime this week. Vose also noted that Ashton had in the past told Lamar he wasn't planning on running.

"The rumors were around years ago," Vose said, adding that Lamar "generally trusts people to be a man of their word." Finally, Vose said, "You meet your opponents as you get them."

Ashton retired immediately after the Casey Anthony trial. He went on to write a best-selling book, "Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony." Ashton said local defense attorneys, other prosecutors and even civil-litigation lawyers encouraged him to challenge Lamar.

By entering the race, 54-year-old Ashton becomes the third Democrat to seek the office of the region's top elected law-enforcement official. Another former prosecutor in Lamar's office, Ryan Williams, also wants the job.

So far, no candidates have entered on the Republican side, but the fact that Lamar now faces two challengers he once employed — both with knowledge of the inner workings of the office — ensures the likelihood of a compelling race for a powerful office. Their primary election is set for Aug. 14.

Ashton's 30 years of legal experience, 300 or so criminal trials and connection to the Anthony case provide him with a track record and national name recognition.

He does not shy from the Anthony case — which the prosecution lost. In fact, he says the trial shows him at his best, doing what he loves: being a prosecutor. But he said, "I hope that through this process we will be talking about a lot of things more than Casey Anthony."

"To me the most important aspects of what the State Attorney's Office does is the legal work product, the charging decisions, the presentation of cases in court, the representation of the people in the criminal courts of Orange and Osceola counties," Ashton said.

The political and management aspects of the job are necessary, he added, but always ancillary to the work the prosecutors do in the courtroom.

Ashton noted that Lamar doesn't try cases personally and has handled very few during his long tenure in office.

"There's no place to hide in a courtroom when you're trying a case," Ashton added. "People can look at that case [the Anthony trial] and draw their own conclusions about how they feel about me as a lawyer representing them or the state of Florida. There's no way to spin it. No political handler can change what came out in that courtroom and people's opinion of it."

He vowed to continue trying cases himself if elected to the top prosecutor's job.

Ashton said he wants to change a culture there that he insists does not allow for careful charging decisions.

The current system by which attorneys in an intake division determine the merits of criminal cases before they get assigned to trial attorneys causes the office not to be discriminating enough in the cases it prosecutes, Ashton says.

"There is a sort of when-in-doubt-file-[charges] mentality that is at play in the office," Ashton said.

This process, he said, discourages trial attorneys from challenging the charging decisions and taking personal responsibility for and ownership of the cases they try. It also has the potential of wasting taxpayer money and convicting the wrong people.

He doesn't accuse the office of ignoring clear evidence of innocence, but Ashton said the current system explains why Lamar's troops have low conviction rates at trial and a high rate of cases tossed out by judges before they go to juries.

Last month, the Orlando Sentinel documented 10 years' worth of data, showing Lamar's prosecutors win sex-crimes cases at trial slightly more than half the time, the lowest rate among prosecuting offices that took the most sex-offense cases to trial for the decade.